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About mid-day the sea began to be troubled, as though its waves were being pushed on by some force as yet unseen, and before two o'clock gusts of cold air from the nor'east travelled landwards off the ocean with a low moaning sound, which was very strange to hear.
I was just saying to myself that we ought to be somewhere near the center of the old Atlantic as it used to be, and wondering whether we had got our course laid right to go fairly between the Canaries and the Cape de Verdes, for I didn't want to be harpooned by Gogo or the Peak of Teneriffe, when all of a sudden there came a lightening in the nor'east and the stars broke out there.
'I thought, says he, 'as folks wanted to talk about Huldy and me, I'd give 'em somethin' wuth talkin' about." "Lordy massy! Stick yer hat into the nor'east, Horace, and see 'f ye can't stop out this 'ere wind. I'm e'eny most used up with it." So spake Sam Lawson, contemplating mournfully a new broad-brimmed straw hat in which my soul was rejoicing.
'Let her off out o' the wind. We'll be makin' for Harbour Round for shelter. Holdin' on, did you say? My dear man, they's a whirlwind brewin'! "But if 'twas blowin' hard a nor'east snorter, with the gale raisin' a wind-lop on the swell, an' the night comin' down if 'twas blowin' barb'rous hard, sometimes we'd get scared. "'Skipper, we couldn't help sayin', ''tis time t' get out o' this.
"The course was South-40-East, and, against this wind and sea, together with a strong current to the nor'east, we would make eight knots under easy steam. Therefore, by eight o'clock, when the furnaces blew out, we were here." He jabbed in a pin a little further down the chart. Mr. Boyle, whose peculiar gifts in the way of speech were accurately described by Dr. Christobal, grunted agreement.
"Ay, sir," said Wylie, addressing the merchant; "but she ran about eighty-five miles after that, on a northerly course no wind on her starboard quarter and, being deep in the water, she'd make lee way say eighty-two miles, nor'east by east." The general took eighty-two miles off the scale, with a pair of dividers, and set out that distance on the chart.
I 've ben out yere in them things a fore, an' they're sure hell. If we don't git sight o' thet outfit mighty soon, 't ain't likely we ever will. I 've been expectin' that wind to shift nor'east all day then we'll get it." He got down on his knees, endeavoring to decipher some faint marks on the sand.
His dark face became serious, and his keen black eyes looked sharply back into Nick's expressive countenance. He answered at once in characteristic fashion. "The Reserve's nigh on to a hund'ed an' fifty miles from here, I guess. Lies away ther' to the nor'east, down in the Foothills. The bluff lies beyond." Then he paused and a flash of thought shot through his active brain.
"When thoroughbred horses want to leap a barrier, they go up to reconnoitre it, and smell it over. Calyste is a lucky dog!" "Oh, hush!" she cried. "I'm mute. Ah! in the olden time I knew all about it," said the old chevalier, striking an attitude. "The weather was fine, the breeze nor'east.
The cook says t' me that he'd rather be a cook than a skipper, an' a skipper than a ship's undertaker, but he've no objection t' turn his hand t' anything t' 'blige a party o' friends: which he'll do, says he, by takin' the schooner t' Broad Cove o' the Harbourless Shore, which is a bad shelter in a nor'east gale, says he, but the best he can manage.
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